Psychoanalytic

Social Theory
Karen Horney

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 ▫ Psychoanalytic Social Theory emphasized the
role of society and culture towards formation
Overview of of personality.
▫ For Horney, people’s motivation are not ruled
Horney’s by pleasure but by safety and satisfaction.
Theory ▫ Like other psychodynamic theories, she also
placed importance on childhood experiences
specifically parental ones.

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 ▫ Horney believed that each person begins life
with the potential for healthy development;
Basic Hostility people need favorable conditions for growth.
▫ Favorable conditions provide people with
and feelings of safety and satisfaction.
Basic Anxiety ▫ Adverse influences may interfere with these
favorable conditions (i.e., parents’ inability or
unwillingness to love their child)

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 ▫ If parents do not satisfy the child’s needs for
safety and satisfaction, the child develops
feelings of basic hostility toward the parents;
then, repress their hostility toward their parents
Basic Hostility and have no awareness of it (guilt, punishment
and and love)
▫ Repressed hostility leads to profound feelings of
Basic Anxiety insecurity and vague sense of apprehension -
basic anxiety
▫ Basic anxiety - a feeling of being isolated and
helpless in a world conceived as potentially
hostile.
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 ▫ Basic hostility and basic anxiety are
“inextricably interwoven”
Basic Hostility ▫ Basic anxiety itself is not a neurosis, but “it is the
nutritive soil out of which a definite neurosis
and may develop at any time”
Basic Anxiety ▫ Basic anxiety is constant and unrelenting

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 ▫ Horney originally identified four general ways
that people protect themselves against this
Basic Hostility feeling of being alone in a potentially hostile
and world - affection, submissiveness, striving for
power, prestige, or possession, and withdrawal.
Basic Anxiety ▫ These protective devices did not necessarily
indicate a neurosis.

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 ▫ For Horney, compulsion is the salient
characteristic of all neurotic drives.
▫ Horney insisted that neurotics do not enjoy
Compulsive misery and suffering.
Drives ▫ Neurotics cannot change their behavior by free
will and must continually and compulsively
protect themselves against basic anxiety.

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 ▫ Horney identified 10 categories of neurotic needs
that characterize neurotics in their attempts to
combat basic anxiety.
Neurotic Needs ▫ Specific than the four protective strategies, but
they describe the same basic defensive strategies.
▫ Neurotic needs overlapped one another, and a
single person might employ more than one.

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 1. The neurotic need for affection and approval -
the need to attempt indiscriminately to please
others and try to live up to the expectations of
others.
2. The neurotic need for a powerful partner -
Neurotic Needs includes an overvaluation of love and a dread of
being alone or deserted.
3. The neurotic need to restrict one’s life within
narrow borders - downgrading their own
abilities and dread making demands on others

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 4. The neurotic need for power - the need to
control others and to avoid feelings of weakness or
stupidity.
5. The neurotic need to exploit others - evaluating
others on the basis of how they can be used or
exploited, but fears being exploited by others.
Neurotic Needs 6. The neurotic need for social recognition or
prestige - trying to be first, to be important, or to
attract attention to themselves.
7. The neurotic need for personal admiration -
inflated self-esteem must be continually fed by the
admiration and approval of others.
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 8. The neurotic need for ambition and personal
achievement - strong drive to be the best; must
defeat other people in order to confirm their
superiority.
9. The neurotic need for self-sufficiency and
independence - need to move away from people,
Neurotic Needs thereby proving that they can get along without
others.
10. The neurotic need for perfection and
unassailability - dread of making mistakes and
having personal flaws; desperately attempt to hide
their weaknesses from others.
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 ▫ Three categories of behaviors and attitudes
toward oneself and others that express a
person’s needs.
Neurotic Trends ▫ People use each of the neurotic trends to solve
basic conflict - helplessness, hostility and
isolation.

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 ▫ Moving toward people (the compliant
personality)
Neurotic Trends ▫ Moving against people (the aggressive
personality)
▫ Moving away people (the detached personality)

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 ▫ Solving the basic conflict of helplessness.
▫ People employ either or both of the first two
neurotic needs; desperately strive for affection
and approval of others, and/or seek a powerful
Moving Toward partner who will take responsibility for their
People lives - morbid dependency.
▫ Compliant people are willing to subordinate
themselves to others, to see others as more
intelligent or attractive, and to rate themselves
according to what others think of them.

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 ▫ Solving the basic conflict of hostility of others.
▫ People move against others by appearing tough
or ruthless.
▫ Incorporated the neurotic need to be powerful,
Moving Against to exploit others, to receive recognition and
People prestige, to be admired, and to achieve.
▫ Aggressive people are motivated by a strong
need to exploit others and to use them for their
own benefit, rarely admit their mistakes and are
compulsively driven to appear perfect,
powerful, and superior.
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 ▫ Solving the basic conflict of isolation.
▫ Expression of needs for privacy, independence,
and self-sufficiency.
▫ They frequently build a world of their own,
Moving Away refuse to allow anyone to get close to them,
value freedom and self-sufficiency, and often
People appear to be aloof and unapproachable.
▫ Detached persons have an intensified need to be
strong and powerful .
▫ Their basic feelings of isolation can be tolerated
only by the self-deceptive belief that they are
perfect and therefore beyond criticism
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NEUROTI PERSONALI BASIC
NEUROTIC NEEDS
C TRENDS TY TYPE CONFLICT

● Affection and approval

Moving Compliant
Helplessness ● Powerful partner
Toward Personality
● Narrow limits to life

● Power
● Exploitation
Moving Aggressive
Hostility ● Recognition or prestige
Against Personality
● Personal admiration
● Personal achievement

● Self-sufficiency and
Moving Detached independence
Isolation
Away Personality ● Perfection and
unassailability
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 ▫ Moving toward others and moving against
others are polar opposites.
▫ For compliant and aggressive individuals, the
Neurotic Trends center of gravity lies outside the person.
▫ For detached individual, other people are of
lesser importance.
▫ Personality types of Horney is similar to Adler’s
styles of life.

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 ▫ Horney found that in the neurotic person, one of
these three trends is dominant, and the other two
are present to a lesser degree.
▫ The dominant neurotic trend is the one that
Neurotic Trends determines the person’s behaviors and attitudes
toward others.
▫ Other two trends must actively be repressed,
which can lead to additional problems. Any
indication that a repressed trend is pushing for
expression causes conflict within the individual.

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 ▫ Conflict - the basic incompatibility of the three
neurotic trends; this conflict is the core of
neurosis.
Neurotic Trends ▫ All of us, whether neurotic or normal,
experiences some conflict.
▫ The difference between the normal person and
the neurotic person lies in the intensity of
conflict.

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 ▫ Normal people experience mild conflict;
neurotics experience severe and insoluble
conflict.
Normal People ▫ Normal people are mostly or completely
conscious of their strategies toward other
vs people; neurotics are unaware of their basic
Neurotic People attitude.
▫ Normal people are free to choose their actions;
neurotics are forced to act.
▫ Normal people can choose from a variety of
strategies; neurotics are limited to a single trend
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 Normal defenses Neurotic defenses
(Spontaneous movement) (Compulsive movement)
Toward people Toward people
(friendly, loving personality) (compliant personality)
Against people
Against people
(survivor in a competitive
(aggressive personality)
society)

Away from people

Away from people
(autonomous, serene
(detached personality)
personality)

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 ▫ Intrapsychic processes originate from
Intrapsychic interpersonal experiences; but as they become part
of a person’s belief system, they develop a life of
Conflict their own.
▫ The two important intrapsychic conflict are the
idealized self-image and self-hatred.

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 ▫ Idealized self-image is an attempt to solve conflicts
by painting a godlike picture of oneself - based on an
inflexible, unrealistic self appraisal.
▫ Self-hatred is an interrelated yet equally irrational
Intrapsychic and powerful tendency to despise one’s real self.
Conflict ▫ As people build an idealized image of their self, their
real self lags farther and farther behind.
▫ This gap creates a growing alienation between the
real self and the idealized self and leads neurotics to
hate and despise their actual self because it falls so
short in matching the glorified self-image.

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 ▫ Feelings of isolation, inferiority and alienation
from oneself drive a person to desperately
acquire a stable sense of identity.
▫ As a result, the person forms an idealized self-
Idealized Self- image.
Image ▫ Neurotics glorify themselves in different ways.
▫ Compliant people - good and saintly
▫ Aggressive people - strong, heroic, and
omnipotent
▫ Detached people - wise, self-sufficient, and
independent
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 ▫ As the idealized self-image forms completely,
neurotics begin to believe in the reality of that
image.
▫ They lose touch with their real self and use the
Idealized Self- idealized self as their standard for self-
evaluation.
Image ▫ Rather than growing toward self-realization,
they move toward actualizing their idealized
self.
▫ Idealized self-image has three aspects: neurotic
search for glory, neurotic claims, and neurotic
pride.
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 ▫ The comprehensive drive toward actualizing the
ideal self
Neurotic Search ▫ Neurotics incorporate their idealized self-image
into all aspects of their lives (e.g., relationship,
for Glory goals, self-concept)
▫ Includes three other elements: need for
perfection, neurotic ambition, and drive toward
vindictive triumph

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 ▫ Need for perfection - drive to mold the whole
personality into the idealized self; neurotics try
to achieve perfection by erecting a complex set
Neurotic Search of “shoulds” and “should nots” - tyranny of the
should
for Glory ▫ Neurotic ambition - compulsive drive toward
superiority
▫ Drive toward a vindictive triumph - desire to
put others to shame or defeat them through
one’s very success

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 ▫ For the drive for a vindictive triumph, it grows
out of the childhood desire to take revenge for
Neurotic Search real or imagined humiliations
▫ No matter how successful the neurotics are, they
for Glory never lose their drive for a vindictive triumph—
instead, they increase it with each victory
▫ Every success raises their fear of defeat and
increases their feelings of grandeur

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 ▫ Neurotics build a fantasy world—a world that is
out of sync with the real world
▫ Because of it, they proclaim that they are
Neurotic Claims special and therefore entitled to be treated in
accordance with their idealized view of
themselves
▫ They fail to see that their claims of special
privilege are unreasonable

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 ▫ When normal wishes are not fulfilled, people
become understandably frustrated
Neurotic Claims ▫ Whereas when neurotic claims are not met,
neurotics become angry and unable to
comprehend why others have not granted their
claims

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 ▫ False pride based on the image of the idealized
self and not on a realistic view of the true self
▫ Genuine self-esteem is based on realistic
attributes and is generally expressed with quiet
dignity
▫ Whereas neurotic pride is based on an idealized
Neurotic Pride image of self and is usually loudly proclaimed
in order to protect that image
▫ When neurotic claims are not satisfied, the
neurotic pride is hurt
▫ They avoid people who reject their claims and
try to become associated with socially
prominent and prestigious institutions
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 ▫ Neurotics hate themselves when they see that
their real self does not match the insatiable
demands of their idealized self
▫ Self-hatred can be expressed in 6 different
ways:
▫ Relentless Demands on the Self - make
Self-Hatred demands on oneself that don’t stop even
after achieving success
▫ Merciless Self-Accusation - constantly
berating oneself and assuming
responsibility to negative events
▫ Self-Contempt - preventing oneself from
striving for improvement or achievement
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 ▫ Self-Frustration - preventing oneself from
experiencing pleasure
▫ Self-Torment - primary intention of hurting
oneself
Self-Hatred ▫ Self-Destructive Actions and Impulses -
destroying one’s own life physically or
psychologically, conscious or unconscious,
acute or chronic, carried out in reality or
imaginative

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 ▫ For Horney, psychic differences between men
and women are not the result of anatomy but
rather of cultural and social expectations
▫ She agreed with Adler’s masculine protest
▫ Horney insisted that basic anxiety is at the core
Feminine of men’s need to dominate women and women’s
wish to humiliate men.
Psychology ▫ She viewed Oedipus complex as
environmental, expression of neurotic need for
love, and not universal
▫ She did not believe the concept of penis envy
▫ Horney contended that we should not focus on
the psychological difference of men and women
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 ▫ The aim of Horneyian psychotherapy is to have
patients give up their idealized self-image,
relinquish their neurotic search for glory, and
change self-hatred to an acceptance of the real
self
▫ Unfortunately, patients are usually convinced
Psychotherapy that their neurotic solutions are correct, so they
are reluctant to surrender their neurotic trends
▫ The therapist’s task is to convince patients that
their present solutions are perpetuating rather
than alleviating the core neurosis
▫ Ultimately, successful therapy is built on self-
analysis
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 ▫ For Horney, dreams are attempts to solve
conflicts
▫ Dream interpretation helps the patient to
understand its real self
Psychotherapy ▫ Free association reveals the idealized self-
image
▫ Successful therapy results to self-realization,
deeper self-understanding, genuine feelings to
others, and greater interest at the job itself

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 ▫ Slightly higher on free choice
▫ Optimism
Concept of ▫ Middle position in causality and teleology
▫ Middle stance on conscious and unconscious
Humanity motivation
▫ Social influences
▫ Similarities

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